The Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) has updated their information regarding Data Management Plan requirements for all BIO directorate proposals. The update includes clarifications for requirements, DMP content and reports for post-award management. See BIO’s Guidance on Data Management Plans (PDF) for more information.

The requirement guidelines point out that “any specific instructions and exceptions to the two page limit will be found in the specific Program Solicitations.” The requirements further clarify the responsibilities in collaborative proposals “lead PI is responsible for the DMP for the entire project…and responsible for reporting in the Annual and Final Reports on the data management, preservation and access for the whole project.”

The content section adds “software or computer code that is required for replication” to BIO’s definition of “data”. This section also emphasizes the “principle of timely access” to data and that “applicants should address how this will be met in their DMP statement.” To help proposal reviewers (during the merit review process), NSF-BIO has specified how the DMP should be organized. This organization is slightly different than the version of the NSF-BIO template in the DMPTool.

Because of the update to the NSF-BIO Data Management Plan, the DMPTool template for NSF-BIO has been revised. All NSF-BIO DMPs currently under development for proposals, should move their content to the new version of the NSF-BIO plan (V2).

If you have a NSF-BIO DMP in development, export, from your “MyPlans” page of the DMPTool, the content as a “Plain Text” file. Make sure “Plain Text” is selected and click the “Export” button located under your specific plan. Now create a new DMP using the new NSF-BIO plan.  Select the new version, “NSF-BIO: Biological Sciences (v2)”, from the “Create a new plan” pull-down menu. Now copy and paste the content from the exported DMP (v1) to the new plan (v2) using the following directions:

Copy all content from v1 question 1 to v2 question 1.
Copy all content from v1 question 3 to v2 question 1.
Copy all content from v1 question 2 to v2 question 2.
Copy the “dissemination” content from v1 question 4 to v2 question 3.
Copy the “Policies for Data Sharing & Public Access” content from v1 question 4 to v2 question 4.
Copy all content from v1 question 5 to v2 question 5.